Insecurities
by Matrix Girl
Summary: Mystique's first training session becomes her obsession.... I'm not totally happy with this, there's lots wrong with it, but I've fixed it as much as I can. Please have a look and comment anyways. Oh, and to preserve continuity, read "First Jump" first


My second fic. Follows on from "First Jump" so read that first!  
  
By Aimee M. (AKA MatrixGirl)  
e-mail! MatrixGirl@stalker.co.uk  
  
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Mystique looks around uninterestedly. A sence of insecurity surrounds her. She walks slowly and carefully past Tank, hoping he won't notice her. He does notice her, and spins around to face her. "Hi!" he says to her enthusiastically.  
"Yea... ok..." She replies and keeps walking. She needs some time to think.  
Taking her place in a small corner of the ship, she slips down and sits on the floor, noticing it's uninviting coldness. She listens to something dripping... drip... drip... drip... It sooths her and she closes her eyes, thinking deeply. She hadn't remebered much about the last few days, but it was all flooding back, painfully, like dozens of pin-pricks... deep and scarring.  
She was at total war with herself, not knowing what was around the next corner, or what her next decision would have to be.  
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Neo and Trinity eat silently in the kitchen area. Neither of them speak. They just sit in silence. Both overtaken by their own thoughts.  
They are both on edge, and the whole room is filled with tension, waiting to be released, but instead growing more and more.  
Neo sighs. Trinity looks up at him. They sat and stare at each other for a while, unable of what to say. They both decide to not say anything, and whip their eyes back at the metal floor.  
  
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Morpheus and Tank are standing around the computer screens, discussing something.  
"Mystique?" Morpheus asks into the blueish darkness. Mystique appears out of the dark suddenly, her complexion is pale, as if she has spend too much time infront of a computer screen. She doesn't look hesitant, but feels it. "Yes?" She replies.  
"Great... They're going to do something else... she thinks sarcastically to herself. "They're screwing with me." She continues to think, untrustingly.  
"We have to get on with your training. You'll run through the sparring program a few times after we've downloaded a few of these techniques. We'll take it slow becasue you're alot more fragile-" Morpheus tells her, trying to be supportive. Mystique gets the wrong impression, and cuts him off. "Fragile. ohhhkaay...."  
"I just meant-" Morpheus is cut off again.  
"I'll show you 'fragile'!" She walks away, acting calm. Tank trys to go after Mystique to talk to her.  
"Don't." Morpheus stops him.  
  
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Trinity stands up. "Neo, I'll- nevermind." She walks off quickly. Neo and trinity are both scared. Neither one of them were going to admit it, but they could see it in each others eyes. It was driving them away from each other.  
  
Neo stares into his bowl. He feels sickened, the reason for it not being the fact that he just ate a bowl of white goop, but because he couldn't figure out why Mystique made the jump that he couldn't.  
But Neo would never know.  
Mystique would never tell.  
She wouldn't let them see her vulnerable.  
  
Mystique stands at the door of the kitchen, looking more powerful as she ever has before.  
"I challenge you Neo!"  
Neo scoffs. "Yea, right!" he laughs. "I'd crush you."  
Mystique grits her teeth imperceptibly. She surpresses her frustration at the insult she has received from Neo.  
"You think you're so great..." she thinks and she walks out swiftly and resumes position of her little corner so she can think.  
  
Neo frowns, and wonders why Mystique had been provoked by such a comment. He couldn't see the insult, he didn't mean it to be one. She just took it the wrong way, is what he thought.  
But it was deeper than that for her.  
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Morpheus walks over to Mystique and looks down at her. Mystique feels about 2 feet tall. She stares at the ground.  
"We have to do this now, no more stalling." Morpheus says, trying to sound supportive.  
Mystique stands up. She looks at Morpheus. His eyes are brown and look warm... unlike hers, which are blue-green, glassy looking and destroyed. She feels fatigued and slighly paranoid.  
She walks over to Tank. Then she glances at the chair and frowns. "Are you sure you're ready for this?" He asks.  
"Yea..." She replies, and goes over to the chair. She runs her fingers down the tattered apholstery and sits down in it, leans back and lies there, taking in a long, deep breath of apprehention. She wonders what this is for, and feels confused in general.  
There's a long pause and Tank stares at Mystique for a while, not completely convinced she'll handle it.  
"Well, can you even show me what you are going to do?"  
"Ok, I may as well tell you how to operate this, seeing as you probably will someday." Tank takes a disk out of a tray. Mystique smiles a little. "You take one of these disks and put it in here." He pushes the disk into the drive. "Then you press these buttons and download it. It's not that hard."  
"Ok." Mystique sits back on the chair. She has memorised the process. She is a fast learner. Morpheus approaches them and watches to see what her initial reaction is. He walks over to her in the chair, and slips the plug into the back of her head.  
Tank readys the computer and downloads the program.  
Mystique chokes and trys to get up out of the chair, but Morpheus restrains her. She hyperventalates for a minute then pulls herself together. "Whoa... that's really... er...." She takes a deep breath in.  
  
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An hour later, they are still downloading programs into Mystique. She feels like her head is going to explode from all of the information being crammed into it, she rubs her head and closes her eyes.  
Morpheus sences her distress and removes the plug, and Mystique jumps up swiftly, and stumbles away, flinging the door to her room open and colapsing on the bed.  
  
She wasn't strong enough, she solemly admitted to herself. Feeling desperate, she curls up as small as she can on the bed.  
  
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"Mystique?" Neo asks, trying to wake her from her sleep. She twitches and winces, then sits up slowly, and looks up at Neo, blurry eyed. Then she opens her eyes wide at him. "I wasn't kidding you know."  
"I know you weren't. But how do you expect to even TRY that if you don't get out there and finish that downloading?"  
Mystique stands quickly and walks out the door and sits back in the chair. She thinks, she can beat it, it's not too far from her reach, another step up the long ladder she is has to climb.  
They all stare at her.  
"What are you waiting for?" She demands.  
Tank swiftly gets to continuing downloading.  
  
Six hours later, she is still lying there. Enduring what nobody thought she would. She is not going to give up. Not this time.  
They finally finish, and she opens her eyes.  
Neo walks past and Mystique sits up and points to him.  
"I was SERIOUS!" She yells out again. Neo glances around, "You're OBSESSED!" he yells back and then keeps walking.   
  
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Mystique lies in her bed, in the still of the night. She agonizes over what Neo said to her. It was all too much of the same situation as she faced with every day when she was in the Matrix. The fact that nobody thought she was good enough, and couldn't do what they could. But she could. She KNEW she could.  
  
She pokes her head around the corner of the door and sees whether anyone is out there. They're not.  
She creeps quietly and sits down at the controls of the computers. She sifts through the tray of disks and finds a few which seem appealing. She thinks that if she has more moves than Neo, she might have a more than equal chance of beating him. The Matrix isn't real, and if it's all in the mind, then this would be all that you needed... to KNOW more. She slips one of them into the drive and sets the computer. She lies in the one of the other chairs, and shoves the plug into the back of her head, and continues to download things into herself that are not normally done. If she just downloaded the programs in that they were going to do anyway, Tank would notice they were going to override them, and then they'd find out. She wonders why Morpheus bothered to keep them if they couldn't use them. She figures that only people who were highly advanced used them.   
She continues like this until she has finished, and then sets everything back to how she found it, and goes back to her room.   
  
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The following day, they finish the downloading process.  
Morpheus approaches her. "It's over."  
"Good."  
"You still have to apply those skills, you realise."  
"Of course."  
"Load the sparring program, Tank."  
Tank does so, and Mystique is standing in a room. Funny she feels less disorientated this time. She turns around and looks at the walls of the room. When she turns back, Neo is standing there. She jumps slightly.  
"You wanted your challenge. Here it is."  
Mystique attacks instantly. She is very ready, and no-one knew that she had downloaded more fighting techniques into herself in the dead of the night.  
Neo is shocked for a second then gets himself together and reciprocates. He is much faster than Mystique, and quickly grabs her and throws her against a wall. She grits her teeth and gets up, dodging an incoming blow, only for Neo to get the upper hand yet again, and grab her arm. She struggles but he flips her onto the floor. She lies there.  
"Very good." Neo grins. "Lets do this again, but this time, I'll fight you using only one finger."  
  
Mystique is infuriated. This time she fights with sheer anger. Neo sighs at her seemingly pathetic attempts, and hits her again effortlessly. Mystique trips Neo, but Neo grabs her and pins her to the ground. He whispers to her, "I don't know what you're trying to do but you're going to get hurt if you keep it up." He is not threatening her, he is just concerned. Then he releases Mystique. She rubs her neck and proceeds to attack again. She was being beaten badly, but she refuses to give up. She ends up on the floor again breathing shallowly. She gets up and stands in a defensive position and she is in deep pain, both physically and mentally. Neo goes to kick her, she dodges it then spins around, only to be hit again.. She gasps and swallows hard.  
"You can give in if you want... everyone fails sometime, you know." Mystique shakes her head slowly then takes one last attempt to hit Neo, he manages to throw her onto the floor again. Mystique stands up quickly, and bows. "Good fight... thank you."  
They exit the program.  
  
Tank removes the plugs from Mystique's and Neo's heads.  
Mystique gives Neo a sarcastic smile. "I think I did pretty well, fighting The One and all." She gets up and walks over to Neo, and in 'good sportsmanship', shakes his hand and brakes his finger, and whispers, "You're not so tough outside of your little game, now are you?"  
Neo cringes slightly, then whips his hand behind his back and gives Mystique a look. It's not a look of hatred or annoyance, just one of confusion.  
Mystique turns and leaves, she is crushed yet again.  
  
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Neo walks into Mystiques room. She is lying on the bed facing the wall. Sensing his presence, she turns around and looks at him accusingly.  
"Why did you do it? Challenge me, I mean."  
Mystique thinks, Because I'm sick of being a loser. Looks like I still am.  
The despaired failure which is Mystique narrows her eyes and replys simply.  
"You'll never know." 


End file.
